Huffington, the socialite and columnist who started the news, blogging and aggregation website in 2005, was responding to a speech in London on Wednesday in which Leonard Downie, the Post's former executive editor, also claimed the celebrity stories accounted for much of the Huffington Post's "highly touted web traffic".

"Once again, some in the old media have decided that the best way to save, if not journalism, at least themselves, is by pointing fingers and calling names. It's a tactic familiar to schoolyard inhabitants everywhere: when all else fails, reach for the nearest insult and throw it around indiscriminately," she said, in a posting on the Guardian's Cif America blog.

"We need to stop pretending that we can somehow hop into a journalistic Way Back Machine and return to a past that no longer exists and can't be resurrected."

Downie, who edited the Post for 17 years and is now vice-president at large, singled out the Huffington Post for criticism in his speech, saying: "Revealing photos of and stories about entertainment and celebrities account for much of the highly touted web traffic to the Huffington Post."

Talking about sites such as the Huffington Post he added: "Though they purport to be a new form of journalism, these aggregators are primarily parasites living off journalism produced by others."

Downie accused them of attracting audiences by appealing to what he claimed are predictable sets of political prejudices on the left or the right, "along with titillating gossip and sex".

She said that although her site does feature news from other providers, "aggregation goes along with a tremendous amount of original content, including original reporting and over 300 original blogposts a day".

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